'What a change a few minutes have wrought in you. Yes! yes! the morning light is breaking. The fiery trial is complete. As I write there rests upon your now placid brow a glorious and marvellously beautiful crown. The cup is drained. 'To him that sat in the valley and shadow of death light has sprung up.' And now awe seizeth me: for there standeth, as yet a long way off, one whose form is like to that of the Son of Man. In a very little while, now, the great event must inevitably occur. He who stands upon the holy mount prepares to open your sight, and give you your commission. How can we see him face to face and live! Let not a passing suspicion of further delay disturb you. Already you begin to feel the influence of his approach. Well may you heave a sigh--as one who experiences a sudden and unlooked-for relief. In less than ten minutes the Lord will appear to you. So make ready, in solemn meditation and prayer, for the most solemn event of your or any other man's life is at hand.' 'If the vision tarry, wait for it,' is the only scripture that seems applicable to my visions: for still they came not. Yet some very serious and substantial experiences now fell to my lot, which shall be the theme of another chapter. CHAPTER III. As manager of this exhibition, I would request the orchestra to play something gloomy and grand, during the remainder of the performance; something weird, mysterious; something in which you can hear the soughing of the wind through the pines of the Hartz Mountains or the Black Forest. A passage from a _Faust_ opera or _Der Freischutz___ might meet the case; for it began to be intimated to me, now that I was sufficiently clairaudient to be able to dispense almost entirely with the pencil, that his Satanic Majesty was no indifferent spectator of the preparation of the man who was about to interfere so signally with his plans and pursuits. Thereupon there began to steal over me for the first time, 'A sense of something dreadful, something near. However it was managed, from this moment till the end of this phase of life I am narrating, I had an almost constant sense of the presence of 'genii of the pit,' of vast intelligence, cruel as ever Satan was imagined, relentless as fate, cold as Dante's ice hells could make them. At first, some influence led me to review the traditional history and prospects of my supposed distinguished visitor, at some length. I discussed the state of his case with no little unction, though shaking in my boots, and in momentary expectation of being gobbled up, body and soul, and whisked off in sulphurous smoke, with only a sulphur-burnt hole in the carpet to mark the spot where I saw the last of earth. Presently my inseparable companion broke in with: